"No good, s.h.i.tface," the machine said, the tone still inflectionless. Before Ryan could give a retort, his foe chose to undertake another of the rabbitlike leaps, straight up into the air. But this time when it landed, the one-eyed man was on the receiving end, pinned down hard.

"Fireblast!" Ryan wheezed as he struggled to breathe from the droid's terrible weight. "Get off my gut."

Gritting his teeth, Ryan pushed back with his left forearm while jamming the panga into one of the small cracks in the repaired areas on the droid's chest. He worked the blade back and forth, striving to find an in. The bot whirred and clicked as servo motors gave back as good as they got. The small onboard comp a.n.a.lyzed the stress the android was currently enduring and chose yet another programmed quip from the select file of profane insults. Sensing a possible victory, the hunter droid came up with a cla.s.sic.

"f.u.c.k you, a.s.shole," it retorted in a cold metallic voice.

"f.u.c.k me?" Ryan spit, his voice rising in disbelief. He knew his mounting rage was totally inappropriate, but he couldn't help himself. "f.u.c.k me ?"

The android was silent as it relentlessly continued to apply pressure.

"No, not f.u.c.k me. f.u.c.k you !" Ryan roared, and shoved with all of his remaining strength. The bot flew back as if it had been launched like a torpedo, rolling over on one side and using its strong steel arms to try to push itself back up.

Ryan had leaped onto the machine's back, keeping his head low as he locked his legs around its middle and hooked his arms under the metal appendages. The droid struggled in Ryan's grip as he applied pressure, using the moment to try to catch his breath as he rode the metal unit around the pit.

This avenue of attack was unfamiliar to the hunter. Usually prey tried to stay away, not come in and stay attached. The obvious tactic of lunging backward and smashing Ryan into a curved pit wall was a tactic not programmed into the device's defense comp, so all it could think of to do was spin and hop.

Ryan hung on, squeezing the droid's arms back even harder. He felt one of the shoulder sockets start to give, and a small burst of sparks flashed out from the joint. He focused renewed energy on the spot, feeling his own recently injured shoulder start to throb in reflected agony.

Then the entire arm ripped free in a spray of sparks and smell of burning wire. Ryan was flung backward when the arm gave way, carried by the momentum he'd generated.

The injury seemed to extend beyond a lost arm. The droid began to thrash and buck in place, a horrible, almost human screaming coming from the speaker that had earlier been tossing out quips.

Ryan staggered to his feet, using the broken arm as a support. Then, once he was erect, he placed the limb on his shoulder and swung it like a baseball bat, smashing it across the side of the bot's face.

The hunter fell like a cut tree to the floor of the pit.

"Hate you, you and all who made you!" Ryan yelled as he smashed the steel rod again and again over the clear housing of the sec hunter's head. He had already decided he wasn't going to stop until the gla.s.slike substance shattered.

Krysty came running through the lower stage door, with Mildred close behind. Dean, Jak and Doc remained in the stands with J.B., who had been unable to clearly see the battle from their viewpoint at the top of the pit. To the Armorer's dismay, Doc had provided a running commentary in the most flowery of language describing what Ryan was doingand having to endurein the pit.

"Thanks to Gaia. Ryan. Stop now, stop," Krysty said, her pale skin flushed a deep pink in a mix of relief and excitement now that the combat had ended with Ryan the victor. Her red, prehensile hair was coiling and moving along her skull like a living thing as she tried to penetrate the killing rage that had fueled Ryan's victory.

Not responding, Ryan brought down the arm a final time across the machine's upper torso before allowing the steel limb to fall from his fingers. He kicked out with his uninjured foot, and the toe of his boot made a dull thudding noise as he smashed it into the pitted steel of the now inert bot.

"He appears to be all right, but I need to examine him," Mildred announced in a voice tight with anxiety, helping Krysty support Ryan as they walked him briskly away from the eyes and cries of the cheering crowd. They pa.s.sed twin techies, in coveralls and tool belts, who had also come out running to try to see to the damage to their own champion.

"You didn't have to rip his d.a.m.n arm off," one of the two whined.

"p.i.s.s off," Krysty retorted, "before I go pick up that arm and beat your heads in myself."

Chapter Thirteen.

"So, what's first on the list?" J.B. asked.

J.B. and Mildred were standing together for the second time in the front room of the tiny clinic Dr. Michael Clarke called an office. It was two hours after Ryan's battle, after the cuts had been wrapped and the broken toes taped. Winded and bruised, the one-eyed man had accepted his winnings from the pit organizers.

Ryan had pa.s.sed the credit chit to J.B., and they'd agreed to meet as soon as the Armorer had obtained the two pairs of gla.s.ses.

"You sit. You wait," Clarke replied, having stepped out of the back of the establishment when hearing J.B. and Mildred enter. After J.B. had shown him the credit chit from Ryan's fight in the pit, the doctor had most anxiously instructed them "not to leave his sight."

Mildred couldn't help but be amused by the fact that Clarke dressed the part of doctor. He wore thick horn-rimmed bifocals, a long white lab coat, conservative necktie, conservative shoes.

"What if we're in a hurry?" Mildred said, enjoying the brief, satisfying rush of power. After the way they had been previously treated when entering Clarke's office the previous night, it felt good to see the little balding man squirm. Now that J.B. was flush, the self-appointed physician was eager to see to their wants and needs.

"I'm with a patient right now," Clarke explained.

"Maybe you needed to make an appointment, Johnno, wait, that's what you tried to do last time we were here."

"Could be," the Armorer agreed, warming to the game. "Hey, Doc Clarke, you want me to come back?"

"No, I want you to wait."

J.B. sat down slowly. "Make it quick."

"Of course."

"Say, Dr. Clarke? I do have one question before you go," Mildred probed.

"Yes?"

"Are you an ophthalmologist or an optometrist?"

"Neither. I never could tell them apart."

Mildred smiled, feeling oddly the way she imagined Doc must feel when catching her in an error. "An ophthalmologist is a medical doctor who can practice surgery and diagnose"

Clarke interrupted her. "I was joking. I know the difference. But working with such crude instruments keeps me from practicing surgery. I do the best I can. If you want to be smug about it, I suppose I'm nothing more than a glorified optician."

Bingo, Mildred thought, but she didn't want to antagonize a man whose services they needed, after all. "Just curious. That's all."

MOMENTS LATER, Clarke reappeared. "I am sorry for keeping you, Mr. Dix. Please come back with me."

"You want company?" Mildred asked.

"No," J.B. replied, his tone sharp.

"Whoa! Excuse me for asking!"

The Armorer's tone softened. "I mean, no. I'd rather do it myself."

Mildred looked at her lover with an odd expression. "I'll wait out here, then."

"This shouldn't take long," Clarke told her. "Usually what eats up the time is the trial and error of matching the right lenses to his eyes. I don't have the luxury of writing him a prescription and sending him on his way. We have to go through the boxes, hoping to find frames and lenses in the same package that fit."

The examining room was lined with cabinets on three sides, a salmon pink series of upper cabinets and lower cabinets. A black countertop ran along the tops of the lower. The fourth wall was cabinetless, and dotted with various eye charts and diagrams of the interior of the eye.

Some gear J.B. didn't recognize was on wheels in a corner. Four three-legged stools were lined up along one of the cluttered counters.

"You do a lot of business? With gla.s.ses, I mean," he asked.

"Sure. No matter what, you've got people with failing vision. I do some work with contact lenses, too, but those are much more troublesome to match up to an individual and finding proper cleaning fluid's a b.i.t.c.h," Clarke replied as he peered intently at J.B.'s open eyes. His attention was drawn to the white slashes of the various adhesive bandages on J.B.'s frowning visage.

"What happened to your face, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Cut myself shaving."

"On your forehead?"

J.B. gave the optician a scathing look. "That's why I need gla.s.ses."

"Very well," Clarke said, letting the matter drop. "But I warn you now, you're going to have to talk to me if you want my help. I have no use for a man who grunts and speaks in monosyllables. If I'm to treat you, I must have your cooperation."

"Okay. I'm used to keeping my own counsel."

"You don't have to with me, not in here. Did you know that before predark, half the population of the United States wore some kind of gla.s.ses or corrective lenses?"

"Half?" J.B. said dubiously. "Don't see that many people running around with specs anymore."

"I know. In those days, increased life expectancy was the cause for the added eyestrain. See, around, oh, I don't know, the year 1900 or so, the average life span of an American was only forty-seven years. More disease and harder work combined to kill a man much earlier then, and this was around the same time when his vision began to fail anyway due to natural causes."

"Everything's got to wear out," J.B. said.

"Agreed," Clarke replied. "However, by the year 2000, a man's life span had increased to seventy-five years."

"Really."

"Yes. So, not only were people living longer, but they were better educated, which meant more reading, and much of the technology was vision driven, which caused even more wear on the eyes. Television and comp monitors. Very bad."

"Not anymore," J.B. remarked wryly.. Clarke continued with the explanation. "Then, after we managed to take out most of civilization with nukes and chems and G.o.d knows what else, another hundred years pa.s.s and in a century's time the life expectancy rate has dropped to a dreadfully low figure."

"How do you figure that?"

"I keep my own records. No census bureau to track it anymore," Clarke said breezily. He gestured to one of the stools. "Now, please sit over there, on the edge of the stool, and face me."

J.B. did as he was told, grateful the stool was covered with a spongy yellow pad. "I'm going to hold up a finger"

"I'm not drunk, Doc."

"This isn't a sobriety test," the optician replied with a smile. "This is for ocular movement. When I hold up my finger, please watch it as I move it back and forth. Keep your eyes glued to the finger, but don't move your head."

"All right."

Clarke continued to speak as he moved the finger in a broad H-shaped motion. "I would daresay due to disease and malnutrition, even with today's shorter life spans, many men and women could use a pair of gla.s.ses. Children, too. But expense and ignorance conspire to keep them trapped in their self-imposed blur, squinting and straining to the see the world around them."

J.B. thought of some of the squalid conditions of the villes and outposts he'd traveled through, and of the faces of the poor and helpless he'd seen. "There are parts of Deathlands where lousy vision could be considered a blessing, Doc," he said quietly.

"Quite. When did you receive your first pair of eyegla.s.ses, Mr. Dix?" the optician replied, mirroring Ryan's question from earlier that day.

"Way back. I'd noticed my vision was starting to go in my early teens. I was having trouble with distance, but up close was fine. Reading wasn't getting harder."

"Waityou read?" Clarke asked in a surprised tone of voice.

J.B. glared at the doctor. "h.e.l.l, yes, I read."

"No reason for anger, Mr. Dix. Just making sure for my records. What do you like to read?"

"Information on blasters. Rifle and pistol journals. Blaster specs. Anything I can find, use, and tuck away in my brain. Even the history of the weapons long gone and extinct. I like to know about them all, just in case I ever do see one."

"Practical, I suppose."

"d.a.m.n straight. But like I say, my eyes were starting to bother me, so I'd been trying to figure out how to get some specs. Then I got lucky. I got them in a trade. Rolling medicine man in a horse-drawn wag. Had pills, needles, bottles and a big steamer trunk of gla.s.ses. I sat down and started trying on pairs until I found a set that worked. The guy had been around and seemed to stay out of trouble since he was legit. Lots of bulls.h.i.t artists pretending to be docs, Doc." J.B. said pointedly.

"Yes, I've met a few," Clarke replied, unruffled. "So you knew even then your vision needed correcting?"

"Like I said, it wasn't so bad then. I could read fine . Needed help seeing far off, but I could shoot if squinted down hard and refocused."

"I had wondered by your demeanor and weaponry if you might be a sec man. With your reading interests, that confirms my suspicions."

"I just try to get by, and I need my eyes to do it."

"Would you read the letters off the chart on the wall behind me, please?" Clarke stood and took a thin wooden pointer. He gestured with it to the top of the chart. "Start with the third line."

J.B. automatically squinted and said " Q, G, T, X."

Clarke rapped the stick on the chart, creating a popping sound on the heavy pape r. "Without squinting, please.

_ J.B had to make himself not follow the reflex. " Q, G, T, X ," he said, as much from memory as actually being able to see the printing.

The optician lowered the pointer. "Fourth line."

"E, D, O no, wait, Q, P."

"Fifth line."

" B, U , or is that a V ? s.h.i.t, those letters are tiny'"

Clarke didn't respond. He lowered the pointer to the next level. "Sixth line."

J.B. didn't reply. He squinted, waiting for Clarke to tell him to stop. Not that an admonishment from the doctor would have mattered since the squinting didn't help.

"I can't see the sixth line," J.B. admitted.